September 14, 2009
So I think Ramadan gave me a mild case of insomnia. I fasted for the first week, so I ended up sleeping during part of the day so I could stay up late to eat and drink. I guess my body decided it liked the schedule, which meant I wasn't able to get to sleep before 6am, when it was light outside. Now that Ramadan is over, I'm hoping I can get back to a normal eating and sleeping routine. Two days ago I tried to get to sleep at 2am, but was restless until 5:30 or so. I went up onto my roof to get some fresh air (read: to smoke, I know, horrible habit, but I'm trying to quit). I noted that it was going to be a beautiful day, so I made the decision to go on a hike to the top of a ridge near my town.
I took off by 5:45 with some ice water and my ipod. I didn't know if there was a trail to the top, so I decided to just go in a straight line up the mountain. I cut through a couple fields (more like skirted the edges of them) until I got to a dried up river near the base of the mountain. Once I crossed the river and up the opposite steep bank, I saw a house maybe 200 yards off, with two dogs that apparently also noticed me. The started barking their little heads off, which apparently woke up the family in the house. Now during Ramadan people tend to be on edge a little, so the second I heard the dogs bark I knew I was gonna get a stern talking to. So I paused my ipod, turned away from the house, and briskly started to walk away. Then I heard a voice yelling at me in the distance. I had two options: turn around and go get yelled at, or jump down the streambank and run away. I chose the former and met the farmer halfway. I figured since I'm the only white guy in town, that he'd eventually see me some day. He instantly reminded me of an Amish farmer (it was the beard and spectacles). He yelled at me in Tamazight, and I quickly realized I don't know Angry Tam, so I started telling him that I just wanted to go up to the top of the mountain and that I was very sorry to wake him up. Either my Tam pronunciation is horrible (pretty likely), or he just didn't want to hear what I had to say. He then yelled at me in Arabic. More apologies from me and quizzical looks 'cause me no speaka da arabic. He then asked me if I spoke french. I said no, more apologies. He started yelling at me in french, so I told him I am an American and that I work and live in the town, and threw in some more apologies. Then, out of nowhere, he asked me if I spoke german and started yelling at me in that language too. Now, I took three years of german in high school and one semester in college; but apparently every word I learned in Tam meant a word of german had to leave my brain, because I couldn't remember a damn word. I apologized one last time and then he just waved me away. I jumped down into the stream bed and followed it for literally two minutes before starting the climb up the mountain. I feel really bad about waking the guy up, but the verbal beating I took in 4 languages was a little much. Left my mind a little sore. I guess I need to learn some Angry Tam and some better apologies.
The hike up the mountain was pretty brutal, and reinforced the idea that I really need to quit smoking. I made it up to the top by 6:45, so the sun was still coming over the ridge, which made for some pretty good pictures. I walked the ridge until it dropped off to a mini cliff. I think I might cowboy camp up their someday to catch a sunset and the real sunrise. It was nice to see some villages on the other side of the mountain that I've heard of but never seen. I then followed the ridge the other way to find a trail down. There actually are a couple trails up the ridge, so next time I go I won't cut through people's fields. The walk down was nice, and I made it home by 8:45. That did the trick to knock me out. I made some post-hike pancakes (thanks for sending the maple syrup mom!) I ended up taking an 8 hour nap after(it was Saturday, so I guess I can sleep whenever and not feel bad about it).
Final note, I've uploaded a bunch of pictures from the last month, so check those out. Take it easy everyone.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Vacation from my site (sort of)
August 24, 2009
So it's been a long time since I've updated this here blog, and a lot has gone on, so let me fill you in a little. In the middle of July I moved into my own house, and it took about two weeks to get some things in order. The last week of July I went to two weeks of technical training. It was nice to see all of the people that I arrived in country with, and the hotel we stayed at felt like little America. The two weeks of training consisted of 4 two hour sessions with meals surrounding class. In the afternoon we'd walk around the town, which has about 45,000 people. I spent a miniature fortune on Magnum bars, which are the best ice cream bar EVER! I had my 26th birthday during training, a day shared with my doppleganger friend (same birth date, but a pretty opposite person from me).
After training I went back to my town and spent a lot of time by myself. At training I mainly spoke english, so my tamazight got pretty rusty. Use it or lose it I guess. It has been nice to get comfortable with my house, and with cooking and all the chores that go along with having your own house. This past weekend I had a very fun little vacation. It was a four day weekend in Morocco (Thursday and Friday were Moroccan holidays), so I went north with a group of 6 other volunteers to Chefchauen which is a very beautiful city about 3 hours south of Tangier. It was a pretty relaxing little vacation, travel aside. I spent Thursday traveling about 4 hours north, but waited until pretty late to get a taxi to my friend's site. Friday morning we left early and took a cab one hour north to Fes, waited for 3 hours for a bus, and then took a pretty comfortable bus 4 hours northwest to Chefchauen. The city is known for it's medina, which is painted white and shades of blue. The town has only 40,000 or so people, so the copious amounts of tourists were much more noticeable than in Fes, which is much larger. While waiting to eat dinner, we were surprised to find out that Ramadan would be starting Saturday instead of Sunday. That made Saturday pretty interesting. Some cafes were open for tourists, but most of the shops were closed all day. We met a group of 4 other volunteers at the hotel we stayed at, which was a pleasant surprise. It's always fun to hear more experienced volunteer's stories of their service. I made it to Fes the next day but ended up getting stuck there for the night, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I stayed with two other volunteers on the roof of a hotel in the medina. We explored the streets around the time people were breaking their fast, which was interesting, the streets were basically empty, and all the clothing shops were closed. That medina is a tourist trap during non-Ramadan daytime, so it was cool to see it empty. This morning I tried to fast while traveling the 5 hours south to home (pretty difficult to not drink water while trapped in a hot taxi). I felt I had to hydrate upon returning home, so I was unsuccessful in my first attempt to fast. I still “broke fast” when it got dark with my favorite snack shop owner.
I have posted pictures of my trip to Chefchauen, so check those out. I will write again about my first Ramadan experiences another time.
So it's been a long time since I've updated this here blog, and a lot has gone on, so let me fill you in a little. In the middle of July I moved into my own house, and it took about two weeks to get some things in order. The last week of July I went to two weeks of technical training. It was nice to see all of the people that I arrived in country with, and the hotel we stayed at felt like little America. The two weeks of training consisted of 4 two hour sessions with meals surrounding class. In the afternoon we'd walk around the town, which has about 45,000 people. I spent a miniature fortune on Magnum bars, which are the best ice cream bar EVER! I had my 26th birthday during training, a day shared with my doppleganger friend (same birth date, but a pretty opposite person from me).
After training I went back to my town and spent a lot of time by myself. At training I mainly spoke english, so my tamazight got pretty rusty. Use it or lose it I guess. It has been nice to get comfortable with my house, and with cooking and all the chores that go along with having your own house. This past weekend I had a very fun little vacation. It was a four day weekend in Morocco (Thursday and Friday were Moroccan holidays), so I went north with a group of 6 other volunteers to Chefchauen which is a very beautiful city about 3 hours south of Tangier. It was a pretty relaxing little vacation, travel aside. I spent Thursday traveling about 4 hours north, but waited until pretty late to get a taxi to my friend's site. Friday morning we left early and took a cab one hour north to Fes, waited for 3 hours for a bus, and then took a pretty comfortable bus 4 hours northwest to Chefchauen. The city is known for it's medina, which is painted white and shades of blue. The town has only 40,000 or so people, so the copious amounts of tourists were much more noticeable than in Fes, which is much larger. While waiting to eat dinner, we were surprised to find out that Ramadan would be starting Saturday instead of Sunday. That made Saturday pretty interesting. Some cafes were open for tourists, but most of the shops were closed all day. We met a group of 4 other volunteers at the hotel we stayed at, which was a pleasant surprise. It's always fun to hear more experienced volunteer's stories of their service. I made it to Fes the next day but ended up getting stuck there for the night, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. I stayed with two other volunteers on the roof of a hotel in the medina. We explored the streets around the time people were breaking their fast, which was interesting, the streets were basically empty, and all the clothing shops were closed. That medina is a tourist trap during non-Ramadan daytime, so it was cool to see it empty. This morning I tried to fast while traveling the 5 hours south to home (pretty difficult to not drink water while trapped in a hot taxi). I felt I had to hydrate upon returning home, so I was unsuccessful in my first attempt to fast. I still “broke fast” when it got dark with my favorite snack shop owner.
I have posted pictures of my trip to Chefchauen, so check those out. I will write again about my first Ramadan experiences another time.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
New House!!!!!
July 15, 2009
So I am finally on my own!!! I moved out a week past the day I was allowed to move out. I enlisted the help of some friends around town to find a place, and the 8th day of looking did the trick. I love the house, and I’m slowly getting things settled. There are a few major purchases left to make before I feel the house will be really comfortable. I must say the paint job is horrendous, but I don’t really judge a house on it’s color. My bachelor-pad has 3 rooms, a kitchen, a large main room with a skylight (covered in thin plastic to keep rain and bugs out), a water closet, and a giant roof that was the selling point for me. I am happy to report that I have electricity and water 24/7, something I didn’t have at my host family’s house (the town is currently in the third year of a three year project to get consistent water to every household, and my host family’s house is in one of the last two neighborhoods to get the improved water service). I have posted some preliminary pictures of the interior of the house, and of the view from the roof. I think the picture of my main sitting room should be an advertisement for 3M tape products. Duct tape is wonderful! My house is right behind the main government building, and a family of storks has made a home on top of the old main government building. My favorite activity this last week has been to sit on the roof and watch the behavior of the storks while listening to music. One other activity that I have found relaxing is laundry. It takes quite a while to do it by hand, but it’s kind of therapeutic. Note, hand washing snotty handkerchiefs is not fun. The stuff just re-hydrates into a slimy mess. That’s where the plastic bristled brush comes in handy. Still disgusting, but my mucus to hand contact is lessened to a degree. On that note, I’ll leave you. I’ll update you later on my first attempts at cooking.
So I am finally on my own!!! I moved out a week past the day I was allowed to move out. I enlisted the help of some friends around town to find a place, and the 8th day of looking did the trick. I love the house, and I’m slowly getting things settled. There are a few major purchases left to make before I feel the house will be really comfortable. I must say the paint job is horrendous, but I don’t really judge a house on it’s color. My bachelor-pad has 3 rooms, a kitchen, a large main room with a skylight (covered in thin plastic to keep rain and bugs out), a water closet, and a giant roof that was the selling point for me. I am happy to report that I have electricity and water 24/7, something I didn’t have at my host family’s house (the town is currently in the third year of a three year project to get consistent water to every household, and my host family’s house is in one of the last two neighborhoods to get the improved water service). I have posted some preliminary pictures of the interior of the house, and of the view from the roof. I think the picture of my main sitting room should be an advertisement for 3M tape products. Duct tape is wonderful! My house is right behind the main government building, and a family of storks has made a home on top of the old main government building. My favorite activity this last week has been to sit on the roof and watch the behavior of the storks while listening to music. One other activity that I have found relaxing is laundry. It takes quite a while to do it by hand, but it’s kind of therapeutic. Note, hand washing snotty handkerchiefs is not fun. The stuff just re-hydrates into a slimy mess. That’s where the plastic bristled brush comes in handy. Still disgusting, but my mucus to hand contact is lessened to a degree. On that note, I’ll leave you. I’ll update you later on my first attempts at cooking.
Monday, June 29, 2009
song choices, people, come on!
June 29, 2009
Just a quick note. On my walk back home last night from my host father’s café, I heard a familiar song being played on a cell phone by a group of young guys on the street. The song was “In Da Club” by 50 Cent. Now, I am not a fan of this song because of how over-played it was when it first came out. It was played on the radio all the time when I went to Sweden in the summer of 2002, and it was annoying then. Seven years later, it has still not lost that ability to bug the bejezus out of me. Fortunately I do not have the Tamazight language skills to ridicule the song choice, so I avoided an incident. Why can’t people from other countries choose to listen to better American songs. It would be so refreshing to hear kids playing more classic American songs, like something by the Beach Boys, Johnny Cash, or Elvis. My dream would be to hear John Denver or Barry Manilow. Anything but “In Da Club”/ Well, I just recovered from my first bout of stomach sickness in Morocco. 4 months without any problems is pretty good I’d say. I’ve been lucky, but I jinxed myself by saying that my stomach is made of steel one day before it all started. The two days of eating just bread and drinking copious amounts of water really did help.
Just a quick note. On my walk back home last night from my host father’s café, I heard a familiar song being played on a cell phone by a group of young guys on the street. The song was “In Da Club” by 50 Cent. Now, I am not a fan of this song because of how over-played it was when it first came out. It was played on the radio all the time when I went to Sweden in the summer of 2002, and it was annoying then. Seven years later, it has still not lost that ability to bug the bejezus out of me. Fortunately I do not have the Tamazight language skills to ridicule the song choice, so I avoided an incident. Why can’t people from other countries choose to listen to better American songs. It would be so refreshing to hear kids playing more classic American songs, like something by the Beach Boys, Johnny Cash, or Elvis. My dream would be to hear John Denver or Barry Manilow. Anything but “In Da Club”/ Well, I just recovered from my first bout of stomach sickness in Morocco. 4 months without any problems is pretty good I’d say. I’ve been lucky, but I jinxed myself by saying that my stomach is made of steel one day before it all started. The two days of eating just bread and drinking copious amounts of water really did help.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Mullets and Flying Sheep (sorta)
June 24, 2009
I have not written in a while, sorry about that. Things have been going well, but I just have not gotten around to writing. Nothing much is new. I have, however, seen a few things lately that have made me laugh and therefore want to share with others. As the title of this entry says, I have seen my first Moroccan mullet. It happened on a market day, and when I first saw it, I didn’t believe it. I did a double take, really. The kid’s mullet is pretty spectacular. The hair in the front is poofy but respectable. The back, however, is pretty curly and shoulder length. If the front of his hair is all business, then the back is like a giant New Year’s Eve party. I have since seen 3 or 4 more mullets. I guess since I’ve seen one and now know that the hairstyle exists in this country, I see it everywhere. If these guys are just getting haircuts they see in movies, then bad 80’s B-movies from India and the US are to blame. I have seen Rambo, Running Man, and the first 3 Superman movies in the past week, so……….
The other part of the title sort of explains something I witnessed this past weekend. I went traveling to the nearest medium size city, which is about 2 hours and 2 taxi rides away. On the first ride, the van I was in was following a little pickup truck full of sheep. One brave male sheep apparently had enough of that nonsense of being transported around in a pickup, so he had the brilliant idea of jumping out of the back of the moving vehicle. The back of this truck had a 3 or 4 foot metal cage with no top attached to the bed. The sheep did not jump high enough. His back leg caught the top of the cage which caused him to faceplant into the side of the truck and land on his back on the road. Everyone in the van I was riding in gasped and then just started saying, “oh, he’s dead, enough, he’s dead.” My van driver alerted the driver of the pickup of the escapee. A guy got out and approached the motionless sheep. When he got about 5 feet from it, the sheep popped up and took off into a field. The sheppard guy was having a lot of trouble trying to catch that probably shocked and concussed sheep. We sped off before I could see the end of the chase, so I like to think that that little escape artist evaded capture and ran to freedom in the mountains. Male sheep are pretty expensive, so I can guess who ended up the victor, and it’s not the wooly one with horns. If only he had jumped a couple inches higher, his chances would have been a lot better.
I get to start renting my own house in about 10 days, so afterwards I will definitely post some new pictures. The house will only have one window to the outside, so it’s going to be pretty dark, kind of like my own little fortress of solitude, but with a porch and roof access. Until next time.
I have not written in a while, sorry about that. Things have been going well, but I just have not gotten around to writing. Nothing much is new. I have, however, seen a few things lately that have made me laugh and therefore want to share with others. As the title of this entry says, I have seen my first Moroccan mullet. It happened on a market day, and when I first saw it, I didn’t believe it. I did a double take, really. The kid’s mullet is pretty spectacular. The hair in the front is poofy but respectable. The back, however, is pretty curly and shoulder length. If the front of his hair is all business, then the back is like a giant New Year’s Eve party. I have since seen 3 or 4 more mullets. I guess since I’ve seen one and now know that the hairstyle exists in this country, I see it everywhere. If these guys are just getting haircuts they see in movies, then bad 80’s B-movies from India and the US are to blame. I have seen Rambo, Running Man, and the first 3 Superman movies in the past week, so……….
The other part of the title sort of explains something I witnessed this past weekend. I went traveling to the nearest medium size city, which is about 2 hours and 2 taxi rides away. On the first ride, the van I was in was following a little pickup truck full of sheep. One brave male sheep apparently had enough of that nonsense of being transported around in a pickup, so he had the brilliant idea of jumping out of the back of the moving vehicle. The back of this truck had a 3 or 4 foot metal cage with no top attached to the bed. The sheep did not jump high enough. His back leg caught the top of the cage which caused him to faceplant into the side of the truck and land on his back on the road. Everyone in the van I was riding in gasped and then just started saying, “oh, he’s dead, enough, he’s dead.” My van driver alerted the driver of the pickup of the escapee. A guy got out and approached the motionless sheep. When he got about 5 feet from it, the sheep popped up and took off into a field. The sheppard guy was having a lot of trouble trying to catch that probably shocked and concussed sheep. We sped off before I could see the end of the chase, so I like to think that that little escape artist evaded capture and ran to freedom in the mountains. Male sheep are pretty expensive, so I can guess who ended up the victor, and it’s not the wooly one with horns. If only he had jumped a couple inches higher, his chances would have been a lot better.
I get to start renting my own house in about 10 days, so afterwards I will definitely post some new pictures. The house will only have one window to the outside, so it’s going to be pretty dark, kind of like my own little fortress of solitude, but with a porch and roof access. Until next time.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Lots of travel, by foot, taxi, and DONKEY!!!!
May 29, 2009
It’s been a pretty interesting few weeks. Well, this last week in particular was pretty full of traveling. I’m loving traveling in Morocco, because every experience is different in some new/strange way. I went to a town an hour and a half to the east on Monday to try to find a tiny stamp for my carte sejour, which is the document that foreigners in Morocco must have if they stay in country longer than 3 months straight without leaving. This particular town had the stamp that I needed, but to buy it I would have to buy a stamp that cost 3 times as much. So I then had to travel 45 minutes south from there to a bigger city that I’m becoming more and more familiar with. This city is not in the mountains, and therefore is oppressively hot. This is me talking about the weather in the spring. I’m so very glad that my town is high up in the mountains. My Alaskan pigmentation and constitution can’t handle extreme heat. Anyway, I only stayed in the town for about an hour and then got back in a taxi to head back home. All toll, 5 hours in 4 very hot taxis for a tiny, expensive stamp. That adventure was very tiring, and I vowed to stay in my town for at least a week before traveling again. Well, needless to say, that didn’t happen. On Wednesday Peace Corps practiced the Part of their evacuation plan for the country and told me to head to my consolidation point, which is about 25 km south of the hot city. I was supposed to get a text message on my phone telling me to consolidate at 7:30 in the morning. I, unfortunately, did not receive any notification until around noon. I hurriedly got my bag ready to go and went to inform my host father and the local police where I’d be going. Around 1:30 I finally got on the road, and then realized that I had lost about 10% of my monthly living allowance. Damn my shallow pockets, it must have fallen out when I was getting my phone out of my pocket. That made the first hour and a half taxi ride no fun. 3 total taxi rides and about 3 and a half hours later I made it to the hotel where we’re supposed to meet if we have to evacuate the country. I was the last one of my group to arrive, and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get back to my town before dark. Peace Corps had reserved one room at the very nice 4 star hotel, and I kind of lucked out that I wouldn’t be able to get back home, because I got to stay at said nice hotel. It was a very relaxing evening I’d say. I took full advantage of the wireless connection and was able to talk to a lot of family via skype. I got to swim in a pretty sweet swimming pool, and took not one, but two showers! The next day I made my way back to my town, and made a pit stop in the hot city to find some big sheets of paper for my artist-tutor. I saw an old man carrying a big bladder of water get struck by a car. He stepped out into the road from between two parked cars and the car nailed him. There was water everywhere, and the man looked like he was definitely in shock. I think the water bladder actually did a good job of protecting him from the impact. While struggling to ask people where a certain bookstore was (people in the city speak Moroccan Arabic, not Tamazight), a nice Moroccan guy with a cockney English accent helped me locate the store, which ended up being closed. We had coffee across the street and chatted while we waited for the store to open. It never did, but I really enjoyed talking to my new friend. Every other statement out of his mouth seemed to end with a “F’in Hewll”. He apparently lived and worked in London for 9 years, which explains the accent. I had no problems getting back the rest of the way.
Today some people in town cut down this huge tree in the middle of town that was dropping a lot of cotton-like pollen all over the place. I think this particular tree has been the cause of my allergies. I was kind of sad to see the thing cut down, but also happy that I’ll be able to breathe easily again. After asking about the tree (I wanted to know if it did the same thing every year), I learned that it was planted a long time ago by the French military people who lived and worked in the town.
At dinner my host mother and I watched a camel auction in a middle eastern country (I think it was Saudi Arabia, but neither my host mother and I could understand what the people were saying to confirm where it was held). I have no idea still what makes a good camel. Pardon me for being specist here, but all camels look the same to me. This might be because I might have watched the same two camels being paraded around, but it looked like 4 sales were made, so I’m thinking it was two pairs. Watching this auction reinforced something I’ve noticed about watching tv here. I am enjoying not being able to understand what is said, because it gives me the chance to try to guess what is going on by body language. I tend to think things are funny that shouldn’t be when we watch crappy B Bollywood movies. I also get to make up my own storylines, it’s kind of like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, but only without anyone around to understand my tasteless jokes. That’s all for now.
May 31, 2009
Today was another day of travel, sort of. I hiked with one of my tutors to the town where he is a teacher (about 4 km away). I had been invited by a friend of his to watch his sheep being sheered. He paid a group of professional sheep sheerers to give all of his sheep haircuts for the summer. It was a pretty big event, everyone in the area came to watch. I guess I was sort of a side attraction, and I was able to impress them a little bit with my Tam. I watched a couple hours of the sheering and then was invited inside for lunch. What a feast. Skewers of sheep meat followed by tajine with the most meat I’ve seen stuffed inside a tajine. Pretty delicious, but there was a lot of oil involved, so I feared for my stomach’s safety. I turned down their offer to stay the night and headed back in the afternoon with my tutor. We ended up catching a ride into town with a group of people on mule-back (is that even a correct way to say that, they say horse-back, so why not mule-back?) Well, I got the honor of riding the one donkey up the mountain and down the road back to my town. I tell ya, what a way to travel. It wasn’t time efficient, I probably could have walked faster than my poor little donkey (I named him Eeor). It was the first time I’ve ever ridden for a far distance on an animal. I figured my legs would thank me for not having to hike the whole way back, but I found out that my rear end does not have sufficient padding to comfortably ride 4 km. I guess I can blame my ass for being sore right now (you decide which ass I’m talking about). It was a bumpy ride. Now I am tired, and the people I’ve told about my ride back to town think it is hilarious. If I had a little more money, I think I’d buy a donkey and ride it around town. Pretty fun, and I think my body would get used to it. I’ve loaded some pictures of the day.
It’s been a pretty interesting few weeks. Well, this last week in particular was pretty full of traveling. I’m loving traveling in Morocco, because every experience is different in some new/strange way. I went to a town an hour and a half to the east on Monday to try to find a tiny stamp for my carte sejour, which is the document that foreigners in Morocco must have if they stay in country longer than 3 months straight without leaving. This particular town had the stamp that I needed, but to buy it I would have to buy a stamp that cost 3 times as much. So I then had to travel 45 minutes south from there to a bigger city that I’m becoming more and more familiar with. This city is not in the mountains, and therefore is oppressively hot. This is me talking about the weather in the spring. I’m so very glad that my town is high up in the mountains. My Alaskan pigmentation and constitution can’t handle extreme heat. Anyway, I only stayed in the town for about an hour and then got back in a taxi to head back home. All toll, 5 hours in 4 very hot taxis for a tiny, expensive stamp. That adventure was very tiring, and I vowed to stay in my town for at least a week before traveling again. Well, needless to say, that didn’t happen. On Wednesday Peace Corps practiced the Part of their evacuation plan for the country and told me to head to my consolidation point, which is about 25 km south of the hot city. I was supposed to get a text message on my phone telling me to consolidate at 7:30 in the morning. I, unfortunately, did not receive any notification until around noon. I hurriedly got my bag ready to go and went to inform my host father and the local police where I’d be going. Around 1:30 I finally got on the road, and then realized that I had lost about 10% of my monthly living allowance. Damn my shallow pockets, it must have fallen out when I was getting my phone out of my pocket. That made the first hour and a half taxi ride no fun. 3 total taxi rides and about 3 and a half hours later I made it to the hotel where we’re supposed to meet if we have to evacuate the country. I was the last one of my group to arrive, and I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get back to my town before dark. Peace Corps had reserved one room at the very nice 4 star hotel, and I kind of lucked out that I wouldn’t be able to get back home, because I got to stay at said nice hotel. It was a very relaxing evening I’d say. I took full advantage of the wireless connection and was able to talk to a lot of family via skype. I got to swim in a pretty sweet swimming pool, and took not one, but two showers! The next day I made my way back to my town, and made a pit stop in the hot city to find some big sheets of paper for my artist-tutor. I saw an old man carrying a big bladder of water get struck by a car. He stepped out into the road from between two parked cars and the car nailed him. There was water everywhere, and the man looked like he was definitely in shock. I think the water bladder actually did a good job of protecting him from the impact. While struggling to ask people where a certain bookstore was (people in the city speak Moroccan Arabic, not Tamazight), a nice Moroccan guy with a cockney English accent helped me locate the store, which ended up being closed. We had coffee across the street and chatted while we waited for the store to open. It never did, but I really enjoyed talking to my new friend. Every other statement out of his mouth seemed to end with a “F’in Hewll”. He apparently lived and worked in London for 9 years, which explains the accent. I had no problems getting back the rest of the way.
Today some people in town cut down this huge tree in the middle of town that was dropping a lot of cotton-like pollen all over the place. I think this particular tree has been the cause of my allergies. I was kind of sad to see the thing cut down, but also happy that I’ll be able to breathe easily again. After asking about the tree (I wanted to know if it did the same thing every year), I learned that it was planted a long time ago by the French military people who lived and worked in the town.
At dinner my host mother and I watched a camel auction in a middle eastern country (I think it was Saudi Arabia, but neither my host mother and I could understand what the people were saying to confirm where it was held). I have no idea still what makes a good camel. Pardon me for being specist here, but all camels look the same to me. This might be because I might have watched the same two camels being paraded around, but it looked like 4 sales were made, so I’m thinking it was two pairs. Watching this auction reinforced something I’ve noticed about watching tv here. I am enjoying not being able to understand what is said, because it gives me the chance to try to guess what is going on by body language. I tend to think things are funny that shouldn’t be when we watch crappy B Bollywood movies. I also get to make up my own storylines, it’s kind of like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000, but only without anyone around to understand my tasteless jokes. That’s all for now.
May 31, 2009
Today was another day of travel, sort of. I hiked with one of my tutors to the town where he is a teacher (about 4 km away). I had been invited by a friend of his to watch his sheep being sheered. He paid a group of professional sheep sheerers to give all of his sheep haircuts for the summer. It was a pretty big event, everyone in the area came to watch. I guess I was sort of a side attraction, and I was able to impress them a little bit with my Tam. I watched a couple hours of the sheering and then was invited inside for lunch. What a feast. Skewers of sheep meat followed by tajine with the most meat I’ve seen stuffed inside a tajine. Pretty delicious, but there was a lot of oil involved, so I feared for my stomach’s safety. I turned down their offer to stay the night and headed back in the afternoon with my tutor. We ended up catching a ride into town with a group of people on mule-back (is that even a correct way to say that, they say horse-back, so why not mule-back?) Well, I got the honor of riding the one donkey up the mountain and down the road back to my town. I tell ya, what a way to travel. It wasn’t time efficient, I probably could have walked faster than my poor little donkey (I named him Eeor). It was the first time I’ve ever ridden for a far distance on an animal. I figured my legs would thank me for not having to hike the whole way back, but I found out that my rear end does not have sufficient padding to comfortably ride 4 km. I guess I can blame my ass for being sore right now (you decide which ass I’m talking about). It was a bumpy ride. Now I am tired, and the people I’ve told about my ride back to town think it is hilarious. If I had a little more money, I think I’d buy a donkey and ride it around town. Pretty fun, and I think my body would get used to it. I’ve loaded some pictures of the day.
Friday, May 22, 2009
May 21, 2009
Today was one of those days where I had no idea what was going to happen, in retrospect. I took up my counterpart’s (with the Department of Water and Forests) offer to ride along with some of the foresters to see what sort of work they do. I thought I’d ride around with them for the morning, and then go back to town, so I planned on doing a bunch of things in the afternoon. Well, the day started off bright and early at 7am, and I rode with 4 other guys in their truck to meet up with about 4 other guys from other W&F offices in the area. It was tricky from the get-go, because most of the guys spoke darija (Moroccan Arabic) and French, and a few words of English. I thought to myself “great, my limited Tamazight knowledge is sure going to help me out today.” I found out later in the day that most of the guys also spoke Tamazight, so it was just fine. The task for the day was to locate points on a map with GPS units. These points were supposed to be forested areas, problem was, they were incorrect, so we ended up in a couple fields. They measured the distance to an actual forested area, and then they marked and described 20 trees close to the GPS points. I actually comprehended the task when they explained it, which amazed me. Every year after this a W&F specialist will visit the spots to see if the trees are still there and in good condition. After doing two such plots, I was feeling kind of hungry and figured we’d head back to town and that would be that. Boy was I wrong, and I’m glad I was wrong. We stopped in a small village and picked up another W&F guy and had lunch at his neighbor’s (or family member’s, I’m not quite sure) house. What a feast. We had tajine AND cous cous, followed up with a plate of bananas (you can guess how I reacted to that) and delicious honeydew melons. The guys quizzed me on the basics of Tamazight (what is: table, tea, tajine, house. Yeah, I got it).
After lunch we headed in the opposite direction of my town for about 30km to what I guessed was our last plot point. I guessed right on that one, finally. The area we were in was absolutely gorgeous. I’m happy I felt that way, because we spent the next 4 hours hiking up and around a mountain range, trying to locate that damn point. That was some of the steepest hiking I’ve ever done, and several times I thought I was going to slip and tumble to my disfigurement or death. Some of the "trails" were about half as wide as the width of my foot. It was so much fun. I was pretty tired afterward, but I think the day went swimmingly well, and I came away with some nice new acquaintances/friends. It was nice to come back to town and be able to kinda/sorta communicate with my friends in Tamazight. Well, I’ve got pictures up from my first three weeks in town, including today’s hiking.
Today was one of those days where I had no idea what was going to happen, in retrospect. I took up my counterpart’s (with the Department of Water and Forests) offer to ride along with some of the foresters to see what sort of work they do. I thought I’d ride around with them for the morning, and then go back to town, so I planned on doing a bunch of things in the afternoon. Well, the day started off bright and early at 7am, and I rode with 4 other guys in their truck to meet up with about 4 other guys from other W&F offices in the area. It was tricky from the get-go, because most of the guys spoke darija (Moroccan Arabic) and French, and a few words of English. I thought to myself “great, my limited Tamazight knowledge is sure going to help me out today.” I found out later in the day that most of the guys also spoke Tamazight, so it was just fine. The task for the day was to locate points on a map with GPS units. These points were supposed to be forested areas, problem was, they were incorrect, so we ended up in a couple fields. They measured the distance to an actual forested area, and then they marked and described 20 trees close to the GPS points. I actually comprehended the task when they explained it, which amazed me. Every year after this a W&F specialist will visit the spots to see if the trees are still there and in good condition. After doing two such plots, I was feeling kind of hungry and figured we’d head back to town and that would be that. Boy was I wrong, and I’m glad I was wrong. We stopped in a small village and picked up another W&F guy and had lunch at his neighbor’s (or family member’s, I’m not quite sure) house. What a feast. We had tajine AND cous cous, followed up with a plate of bananas (you can guess how I reacted to that) and delicious honeydew melons. The guys quizzed me on the basics of Tamazight (what is: table, tea, tajine, house. Yeah, I got it).
After lunch we headed in the opposite direction of my town for about 30km to what I guessed was our last plot point. I guessed right on that one, finally. The area we were in was absolutely gorgeous. I’m happy I felt that way, because we spent the next 4 hours hiking up and around a mountain range, trying to locate that damn point. That was some of the steepest hiking I’ve ever done, and several times I thought I was going to slip and tumble to my disfigurement or death. Some of the "trails" were about half as wide as the width of my foot. It was so much fun. I was pretty tired afterward, but I think the day went swimmingly well, and I came away with some nice new acquaintances/friends. It was nice to come back to town and be able to kinda/sorta communicate with my friends in Tamazight. Well, I’ve got pictures up from my first three weeks in town, including today’s hiking.
Friday, May 15, 2009
relaxation not at it's finest
May 15, 2009
I had quite the experience today. First, let me explain what the hammam is. My town has 3 that I know of. It is the communal bathhouse. You go in, strip to your underwear, grab your soap, shampoo, a sock-like loofa thingy that can range from a smooth fabric to fabric that is almost like a brillo pad (this is used to scrub off dead skin), and a bucket or two that are provided at the entrance. You then go into the first of three rooms. This room is slightly warmer than the changing room temperature. You proceed through a second, warmer room, and finally enter the hottest of the rooms. This room is almost unbearably hot at first, but you must stay to fill your buckets water. There is a hot water tap (read: scalding hot), and a cold water tap. I prefer to go with 2 parts hot, one part cold. This is about all I can handle. Ok, second of all, let me explain that I have never had a full body massage, and that I have not been washed by another person since I was a very small child. I never thought that my first full body massage would be from a 250 pound guy who’s only wearing underwear. Now, when people go to the hammam their neighbors help them stretch and help scrub their back. It’s very normal for Morocco, but I just wasn’t prepared for it. A nice older guy (aforementioned 250 pound man in underwear) approached me in the second, warmer room and asked me a question. I said yes to whatever he asked, and he started to mime out what is customary in the hammam. I thought he was just being generous and helping the out-of-place foreigner. My language skills are apparently not as good as I thought. He then took my sock-like loofa thingy and started to scrub my back. No problem there, I have seen other people doing it, so I figured I could try to fit in. It ended up being a painful massage/scrub down. I swear you could make a little figurine of me out of all the dead skin that was scrubbed off my body (mind you, a very grey, ghastly looking figurine). 20 minutes later, I did feel relaxed, but decided that was probably the last time I’m going to have that done. It’s just not for me. Let me be clear, this is very normal and cathartic for people here. I’m not judging, but I’ll stick with a good old fashioned self-washing from now on. I’ve hit my two week anniversary of coming to my site. I felt like I’ve been in Morocco for a long time, but it’s only been 2 and a half months. Should have new pictures of my town and the surrounding areas soon. I’m going on a hike up the nearest mountain tomorrow with a nice store owner in town. He will identify all the surrounding areas for me, which should help me decide which area I want to explore first on what I hope will be one of many future hikes.
I had quite the experience today. First, let me explain what the hammam is. My town has 3 that I know of. It is the communal bathhouse. You go in, strip to your underwear, grab your soap, shampoo, a sock-like loofa thingy that can range from a smooth fabric to fabric that is almost like a brillo pad (this is used to scrub off dead skin), and a bucket or two that are provided at the entrance. You then go into the first of three rooms. This room is slightly warmer than the changing room temperature. You proceed through a second, warmer room, and finally enter the hottest of the rooms. This room is almost unbearably hot at first, but you must stay to fill your buckets water. There is a hot water tap (read: scalding hot), and a cold water tap. I prefer to go with 2 parts hot, one part cold. This is about all I can handle. Ok, second of all, let me explain that I have never had a full body massage, and that I have not been washed by another person since I was a very small child. I never thought that my first full body massage would be from a 250 pound guy who’s only wearing underwear. Now, when people go to the hammam their neighbors help them stretch and help scrub their back. It’s very normal for Morocco, but I just wasn’t prepared for it. A nice older guy (aforementioned 250 pound man in underwear) approached me in the second, warmer room and asked me a question. I said yes to whatever he asked, and he started to mime out what is customary in the hammam. I thought he was just being generous and helping the out-of-place foreigner. My language skills are apparently not as good as I thought. He then took my sock-like loofa thingy and started to scrub my back. No problem there, I have seen other people doing it, so I figured I could try to fit in. It ended up being a painful massage/scrub down. I swear you could make a little figurine of me out of all the dead skin that was scrubbed off my body (mind you, a very grey, ghastly looking figurine). 20 minutes later, I did feel relaxed, but decided that was probably the last time I’m going to have that done. It’s just not for me. Let me be clear, this is very normal and cathartic for people here. I’m not judging, but I’ll stick with a good old fashioned self-washing from now on. I’ve hit my two week anniversary of coming to my site. I felt like I’ve been in Morocco for a long time, but it’s only been 2 and a half months. Should have new pictures of my town and the surrounding areas soon. I’m going on a hike up the nearest mountain tomorrow with a nice store owner in town. He will identify all the surrounding areas for me, which should help me decide which area I want to explore first on what I hope will be one of many future hikes.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
finally, I have time to post again
May 11, 2009
Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve last posted, but for good reasons. I was pretty busy. Let’s see if I can remember what I have been doing the last month or so. I found out where I’ll be living about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I received a new site (no other American had been placed there before), so I received about 5 pages of information on the town, compared to the 15-20 pages other trainees received who are going to replace other volunteers. About 10 of us in the environment sector received new sites. It was kind of daunting, not knowing what to expect for the next two years. A week after getting the news on site placement, I took an oral test on my language skills. I think I’ve determined that I am a pretty horrible test taker. I am especially bad at oral exams. I thought I knew a lot, but found out I got the minimum needed. I’m fine with that, because it showed me what I needed to work on, namely everything. I’ve got the greeting down, sort of, but I only was comfortable using about 5 verbs. That day I was filled in on what my project would be. What a relief that was, because apparently there are a lot of possible projects in my new town. The following week we had a party for our host families, which was fun, and my wonderful family got me what my fellow trainee dubbed a “muscle djalaba”. It’s really awesome, it’s a djalaba with no hood and no sleeves. Basically I will wear it when I want to flash the pythons: or at weddings and special events. Kif Kif (same, same in Tamazight). Leaving the training town and my host family was hard, because in a short period of time I really grew to love them a lot. We spent 4 days in a bigger town at a hotel before swearing in as volunteers. The swearing in was fun, and I got to show off my muscle djalaba and my tagia, which is the berber skull cap (another present from my wonderful host family), and of course, my pointy yellow elf shoe-slipper thingies.
The day we all headed off to our new sites was again, pretty sad. I was one of three new volunteers that were within 2 or 3 hours of our new sites, so I got to see everyone off. I thought I new the quickest way to get to my site: catch a ride from Peace Corps to the nearest grand taxi stand, ride 45 minutes north, catch another cab east an hour and a half, safi (enough), mashi mushily (no problem). It didn’t work out quite like that. I caught a ride to the taxi stand, but found out it was only for taxis going south, so a nice teenage boy helped me carry one of my bags about 4 kilometers to the other taxi stand. Oh yeah, I had everything I will need for the next two years with me at that time. I don’t think I would have made it if it weren’t for that kid, or I could have caught a city taxi and told the driver where I wanted to go (North!!!!! Allah(move fast)). In retrospect, the latter would have been the better idea, but I guess the kid wanted some exercise, or to torture me, I have no idea. I waited for a bus north, which is what the kid told me was the best option, in the sweltering afternoon heat, before I decided to look for a taxi. Once I found a taxi, I had no problems. Once I got to my new town, I was instantly surprised about the size of it. It’s a pretty decent sized town, and puts my training town to shame. I called my new host family, who I will be staying with for 2 months, at least (more on that later), and told them I was at the taxi stand near the mosque. I then waited for about an hour before calling again. It was a Thursday, and I realized that I had made a little mistake when calling them the first time. The word for Friday is very similar to the word for Mosque, so when I mispronounced the word, they thought I was saying that I was near the Friday. The word for Friday and Mosque is also really close to the words for university and association. It’s probably a good thing I said Friday instead of the others, because they probably would have thought I was crazy. After sorting out the problem, my host father came down to greet me.
My host family is pretty great. My host father owns and operates a café in the center of town, so I hang out there every day and people come in to talk with me and help me learn the language. My host aunt lives right behind the café, so I go there often for lunch or a nap. These first few months I am going to try to learn as much Tam as I can. I found two tutors that are teachers of Tamazight at the local primary schools. They are pretty awesome guys. One speaks English fluently, and the other knows enough to help explain things to me. My host father is pretty well known around town, so he introduced me to many of the people that will be a huge part of my life the next two years. There is a group of 5 guys that escorts me everywhere and that show me around town. Everyone is very helpful and welcoming. There are also an alarmingly large number of people that speak English. Someone at the local government office was nice enough to translate for me when I went to talk to my counterpart at the local Water and Forest Department. About 3 or 4 days in I met a Spanish PhD student who has lived here for about a year now, and will be staying for another year and a half possibly. He speaks 5 languages, English being one of his better languages, so we have had many long conversations. It helps that he’s studying wildlife, which was my undergrad degree.
So now that I have been here for a week and a half, I’m really looking forward to the next two years. I’ve visited with 4 volunteers that are within 2 hours of me, and I finally got to eat a meal without bread!!!!!! Oh yeah, I’ve learned the Tamazight alphabet, which is about 33 letters long. It has only taken me about 4 days to do it. There are several letters that are the same as English. I, Q, X, N (which is backwards, and is actually an L sound), and L (which is actually an N sound), are in the alphabet. It makes complete sense, since Tamazight is a very, very old language, and it spread north to Europe. There are 29 consonants and 4 vowels.
I will have to break the news to my host family that I will need to move out on my own at the end of June. I don’t think they want me to leave, but I need some privacy. It’s pretty exhausting to be constantly bombarded with new words and phrases. I’m eager to learn, though, and think I am doing a decent job of improving every day. I want to learn how to cook, which I feel I can only do if I’m forced to cook for myself or starve. I also feel bad that I am taking up one of the two main rooms as my bedroom, which forces the 7 year old daughter to stay at my host father’s sister’s house. I’m probably going to have to have someone translate for me that I love it at their house, but to get the full Moroccan experience I will need to live on my own. I need to learn how to deal with the lack of running water, washing my own clothes by hand, cleaning my own house, and how to cook with butane gas. I think they may be disappointed at first, but they should get over it. Other volunteers have told me their host families got over it when they moved out, eventually. I will still probably see them every day.
You all can look forward to more regular posts from now on. There are 5 cyber cafes in my town, and I’ve already found the one I’ll use for the next two years. I’m going to try to figure out how to post more pictures on Picasaweb, so I promise to post some more pictures soon.
Well, it’s been a long time since I’ve last posted, but for good reasons. I was pretty busy. Let’s see if I can remember what I have been doing the last month or so. I found out where I’ll be living about 3 or 4 weeks ago, and I received a new site (no other American had been placed there before), so I received about 5 pages of information on the town, compared to the 15-20 pages other trainees received who are going to replace other volunteers. About 10 of us in the environment sector received new sites. It was kind of daunting, not knowing what to expect for the next two years. A week after getting the news on site placement, I took an oral test on my language skills. I think I’ve determined that I am a pretty horrible test taker. I am especially bad at oral exams. I thought I knew a lot, but found out I got the minimum needed. I’m fine with that, because it showed me what I needed to work on, namely everything. I’ve got the greeting down, sort of, but I only was comfortable using about 5 verbs. That day I was filled in on what my project would be. What a relief that was, because apparently there are a lot of possible projects in my new town. The following week we had a party for our host families, which was fun, and my wonderful family got me what my fellow trainee dubbed a “muscle djalaba”. It’s really awesome, it’s a djalaba with no hood and no sleeves. Basically I will wear it when I want to flash the pythons: or at weddings and special events. Kif Kif (same, same in Tamazight). Leaving the training town and my host family was hard, because in a short period of time I really grew to love them a lot. We spent 4 days in a bigger town at a hotel before swearing in as volunteers. The swearing in was fun, and I got to show off my muscle djalaba and my tagia, which is the berber skull cap (another present from my wonderful host family), and of course, my pointy yellow elf shoe-slipper thingies.
The day we all headed off to our new sites was again, pretty sad. I was one of three new volunteers that were within 2 or 3 hours of our new sites, so I got to see everyone off. I thought I new the quickest way to get to my site: catch a ride from Peace Corps to the nearest grand taxi stand, ride 45 minutes north, catch another cab east an hour and a half, safi (enough), mashi mushily (no problem). It didn’t work out quite like that. I caught a ride to the taxi stand, but found out it was only for taxis going south, so a nice teenage boy helped me carry one of my bags about 4 kilometers to the other taxi stand. Oh yeah, I had everything I will need for the next two years with me at that time. I don’t think I would have made it if it weren’t for that kid, or I could have caught a city taxi and told the driver where I wanted to go (North!!!!! Allah(move fast)). In retrospect, the latter would have been the better idea, but I guess the kid wanted some exercise, or to torture me, I have no idea. I waited for a bus north, which is what the kid told me was the best option, in the sweltering afternoon heat, before I decided to look for a taxi. Once I found a taxi, I had no problems. Once I got to my new town, I was instantly surprised about the size of it. It’s a pretty decent sized town, and puts my training town to shame. I called my new host family, who I will be staying with for 2 months, at least (more on that later), and told them I was at the taxi stand near the mosque. I then waited for about an hour before calling again. It was a Thursday, and I realized that I had made a little mistake when calling them the first time. The word for Friday is very similar to the word for Mosque, so when I mispronounced the word, they thought I was saying that I was near the Friday. The word for Friday and Mosque is also really close to the words for university and association. It’s probably a good thing I said Friday instead of the others, because they probably would have thought I was crazy. After sorting out the problem, my host father came down to greet me.
My host family is pretty great. My host father owns and operates a café in the center of town, so I hang out there every day and people come in to talk with me and help me learn the language. My host aunt lives right behind the café, so I go there often for lunch or a nap. These first few months I am going to try to learn as much Tam as I can. I found two tutors that are teachers of Tamazight at the local primary schools. They are pretty awesome guys. One speaks English fluently, and the other knows enough to help explain things to me. My host father is pretty well known around town, so he introduced me to many of the people that will be a huge part of my life the next two years. There is a group of 5 guys that escorts me everywhere and that show me around town. Everyone is very helpful and welcoming. There are also an alarmingly large number of people that speak English. Someone at the local government office was nice enough to translate for me when I went to talk to my counterpart at the local Water and Forest Department. About 3 or 4 days in I met a Spanish PhD student who has lived here for about a year now, and will be staying for another year and a half possibly. He speaks 5 languages, English being one of his better languages, so we have had many long conversations. It helps that he’s studying wildlife, which was my undergrad degree.
So now that I have been here for a week and a half, I’m really looking forward to the next two years. I’ve visited with 4 volunteers that are within 2 hours of me, and I finally got to eat a meal without bread!!!!!! Oh yeah, I’ve learned the Tamazight alphabet, which is about 33 letters long. It has only taken me about 4 days to do it. There are several letters that are the same as English. I, Q, X, N (which is backwards, and is actually an L sound), and L (which is actually an N sound), are in the alphabet. It makes complete sense, since Tamazight is a very, very old language, and it spread north to Europe. There are 29 consonants and 4 vowels.
I will have to break the news to my host family that I will need to move out on my own at the end of June. I don’t think they want me to leave, but I need some privacy. It’s pretty exhausting to be constantly bombarded with new words and phrases. I’m eager to learn, though, and think I am doing a decent job of improving every day. I want to learn how to cook, which I feel I can only do if I’m forced to cook for myself or starve. I also feel bad that I am taking up one of the two main rooms as my bedroom, which forces the 7 year old daughter to stay at my host father’s sister’s house. I’m probably going to have to have someone translate for me that I love it at their house, but to get the full Moroccan experience I will need to live on my own. I need to learn how to deal with the lack of running water, washing my own clothes by hand, cleaning my own house, and how to cook with butane gas. I think they may be disappointed at first, but they should get over it. Other volunteers have told me their host families got over it when they moved out, eventually. I will still probably see them every day.
You all can look forward to more regular posts from now on. There are 5 cyber cafes in my town, and I’ve already found the one I’ll use for the next two years. I’m going to try to figure out how to post more pictures on Picasaweb, so I promise to post some more pictures soon.
Friday, April 17, 2009
I saw WILD MONKEYS
April 9, 2009
My training is finally winding down. I got a chance to go on a pretty decent hike (2 hours out, 2 hours back, 12 km total) to a pretty sweet place. I went with 3 other trainees and my host sister-in-law’s brother. We thought we had gone the wrong direction to get to a protected area that we had heard was close by, so one girl suggested stopping for a rest about a two minute walk from what we eventually found was a really great vista. I would have been so disappointed if I found out that we had barely missed seeing it. I guess ignorance is bliss, so I never would have known what I had missed. The next day I went with 4 other trainees to a big waterfall in our province. It required an hour and a half in a “grand taxi”. Those things are sweet if you are traveling with a bunch of people you’re close to. I’m imagining it’s kind of hell if you’re riding with “strangers”. I’ll find out shortly what that’s like. Anyway, the waterfall was amazing, and I can now cross off one of the things on my list of things to see before I die: WILD MONKEYS!!!!!!! We had heard that there are monkeys at this waterfall, and the whole walk down, which was a giant tourist trap, by the way, we only saw some tree’s rustling. On the way back up from the falls: yep, you guessed it, we saw 3 monkeys. The first one was a momma and her baby, who clung tightly to his/her mom’s belly as she picked through scraps that tourists were giving her. The other monkey was doing the same thing farther up the path. I guess these weren’t really “wild monkeys” but rather park-like monkeys. The ride back was tiring, and I found out that cyber café’s are sometimes open on Sundays, sometimes not. I did, however, get a chance to call home from a pay phone in my town. Pretty good weekend I’d say.
April 11, 2009
Tonight I went to the local Dar Tlib, which is a dorm for children from the surrounding areas that go to school in my town but live too far to realistically travel to and from home every day. There is a national system of these, and it is run pretty efficiently. The two local Peace Corps volunteers and a group of area volunteers were going to do a tooth brushing lesson, but a nationwide transportation strike put a hold on that. It has apparently been going on for a week now. My town was supposed to have a horse festival this Monday and Tuesday, but that has been pushed back a week. The Saturday market was also really affected. Not many people showed up to sell their goods, so it was pretty slim pickings for our weekly food. The prices have also gone way up, so we didn’t buy a lot of what was actually there. Pretty crazy. Anyway, back to my original story. All of the trainees, or teacher, and the two volunteers showed up for a possible talk by the Kaid, who’s a local official appointed by the King. He didn’t show up, so the director of the Dar Tlib provided entertainment for the night. The session started with a reading from the Quran, a religious chant from a group of three girls, and a song by 5 girls and one boy. Then we played a series of games. We started off with a version of musical chairs which was really fun. The director taught the group a song to sing. He would sing a verse, and everyone would repeat. He gave a broom to one person who would go around the room (the seats were all around the walls of the room) tapping people who would then have to get up and conga-line around the room. When the person with the broom dropped the broom, everyone would have to try to find a seat. The last person standing would have to then lead. It was a lot of fun. I’m guessing half of the 143 kids (ages 8 or 9 to 16) attended. The director then had our language teacher do an ice breaker song that we learned when we first came to Morocco. It was kind of a complicated thing, so it didn’t go over extremely well, but it served it’s purpose. The next game was my favorite. The director picked 4 people (including 2 trainees) to leave the room while he explained the rules to the rest. He had a whistle, which he put in the bottom of the back of his jacket. He would then bring one person in at a time and tell them to find the person with the whistle. He would stand with his back to a group of kids and tell the chosen person that someone in the room had a whistle. As he was talking, a child would blow the whistle dangling from his jacket. The acoustics of the room made it hard to tell where the noise was coming from. He would then point at someone across the room and say that they had the whistle. He’d then tell the chosen person to pat down the supposed perpetrator. It would happen 4 or 5 times before the chosen victim would figure it out. Lots of fun. The Americans then did a round of “Row Row Row Your Boat”. It was a mini-semi-disaster. It was too hard to teach the kids an English song, so we just did the round with our group of 8. The night ended with a group of boys leading a huge dance circle. The 5 boys had telunts, which are a round drum, kind of like a tambourine without the bells. Moroccans all have great rhythm. About half of the people got in a circle and started a slow dance around the room. Everyone else clapped. It was fun, but kind of tiring. The pace is really pretty slow, but the drumming is nice. Apparently this is the common dance at weddings all summer. The dancing starts around 8 and sometimes goes until 12. The men and women usually do it separately. This summer is going to be a lot of fun. Our teacher’s sister is getting married in May, and there’s an open invitation for all of us trainees. I can’t wait. A lot of volunteers go to a lot of weddings during the summers. I’m trying to suss out the appropriateness of some American dance moves so I can expose the locals to my horrible dancing.
April 12, 2009
So I guess this makes two pretty amazing weekends in a row. I went back out to the protected area near my town. This time I went with a pretty big group. Four Americans went out with 4 Moroccan guys (all under 20 years old). Our “guide” for this trip was a classmate of my host sister-in-law’s brother. He lives at the top of the protected area and his grandfather has a farm near the river at the base of the valley. The day was perfect for hiking, and I now realize why they call this country the cold land with the hot sun. It was pretty cool in the morning but once exposed to that sun for about 10 minutes I was pretty warm. I found out that I have been saying a pretty common phrase wrong the last 5 weeks. I’ve been saying “Mushi Mushkil“, which means “no problem”. The only problem with that is that I should be saying “Mashi Mushkil”. What I’ve been saying really is “cats (plural) problem”. Huge difference. Luckily a lot of people in my town kind of slur their speech a little, so everyone sounds like they are saying “cats problem”. Our guide took us down to his grandfather’s farm, which is near two really cool old 3 story buildings. We got to the river, where we learned we’d be crossing it 4 times to get to a point where we could head up the mountain to our new friend’s house for lunch. I was not prepared for fording the river. I was wearing my logger boots and long underwear, so I had to take off the boots and string them over my shoulder and hike up my pants and long johns past my knees. That apparently wasn’t far enough, cause my pants were soaked. I may have feet that look like long thin hobbit feet, but that’s as far as that comparison goes. I had to be helped across because I’m not used to walking on rocks without shoes. The hike up was pretty burly, and by the time I made it to the top, I was ready for tajine and some swunfu (rest). Our host gave us some mint tea with bread and fresh honey. I will probably only eat fresh honey from now on, no more stuff out of the bear shaped bottle. Our tajine was chalk full of olives and raisins, and therefore was very delicious. The 6 kilometer hike back to our town was very enjoyable, and I realized that berber people travel faster than anyone I’ve ever met. While talking to one of the local volunteers he confirmed that realization when he said that he calls it berber speed. I got a chance to talk to family tonight (thanks for answering Sarah, and sorry I missed you Adam), which always makes me very happy. I get a little motivational boost every time I talk to someone from home. That said, I’ll probably be calling some people this coming weekend (that means you mom and dad and Adam/Sarah).
April 16, 2009
The transportation strike is over. They came to an agreement last night, so it was a really pleasant sight to see all the grand taxis at our local taxi stand. That means the horse festival is on for this Sunday thru Tuesday. The town was pretty much out of chicken meat, which meant I had a couple small dinners, which suits my small stomach just fine. My teacher loves chicken, so he was pretty happy that we could have some for lunch. My training group gave our environmental educational lesson at the primary school and at the Dar Tlib. We had to change things around quickly several times. We found out we’d be presenting at the school on Monday, and presented on Tuesday. Our teacher was brilliant by coming up with a non-verbal skit to do before our lesson (two fellow trainees and I were seeds that turned into trees, two others planted and cared for us, and the last one cut us with an axe before being chased off by the caretakers). He also taught the kids a song about a little bird and a tree. We presented the lesson in front of a class of first year students (6 year olds), but they didn’t quite understand the skit, so the principal had them leave and brought in a class of 6th year students (11 and 12 year olds), who were much more responsive. We taught a lesson on how to plant little herb seeds in used yogurt, milk, and butter containers. They seemed to really enjoy the hands on demonstration (what kid doesn’t like to play in dirt, I know I STILL do). They also loved the song that our teacher taught them. After our presentation we worked on improving the lesson before giving it last night at the Dar Tlib. The second time around was great. We gave the lesson in front of a larger audience, so we brought up four volunteers to demonstrate the planting with the help of their peers in the audience. The association (community group) we worked with helped out a lot and played a quiz game with the kids after we finished our part. Today we got the feedback from the association and Dar Tlib people, which was very positive. I will be learning where I will be living and working the next two years tomorrow afternoon. I’m so excited and anxious to know.
Here are some things I’ve learned the last month and a half: I really can eat a lot of bread and drink tons of tea, two year olds are hilarious everywhere in the world, being able to laugh at yourself is key in life, sugar rice/pasta (a dish with rice or pasta, powdered sugar, and cinnamon, and sometimes raisins) sounds and looks awesome at first, but halfway through you realize eating it was a mistake, I really love hiking, not knowing the language everyone around you speaks is fine as long as you can utilize humor, and I can get by without a lot of “stuff”. Oh yeah, I still hate bananas, and monkeys are awesome, even though they tend to love the thing I hate most in life (refer back to the start of the sentence if I lost you on that one). Yeah, I can easily say I hate bananas more than anything else in life so far. Enough about that. This might be the last time I get to post before getting sworn in as a volunteer, so enjoy.
My training is finally winding down. I got a chance to go on a pretty decent hike (2 hours out, 2 hours back, 12 km total) to a pretty sweet place. I went with 3 other trainees and my host sister-in-law’s brother. We thought we had gone the wrong direction to get to a protected area that we had heard was close by, so one girl suggested stopping for a rest about a two minute walk from what we eventually found was a really great vista. I would have been so disappointed if I found out that we had barely missed seeing it. I guess ignorance is bliss, so I never would have known what I had missed. The next day I went with 4 other trainees to a big waterfall in our province. It required an hour and a half in a “grand taxi”. Those things are sweet if you are traveling with a bunch of people you’re close to. I’m imagining it’s kind of hell if you’re riding with “strangers”. I’ll find out shortly what that’s like. Anyway, the waterfall was amazing, and I can now cross off one of the things on my list of things to see before I die: WILD MONKEYS!!!!!!! We had heard that there are monkeys at this waterfall, and the whole walk down, which was a giant tourist trap, by the way, we only saw some tree’s rustling. On the way back up from the falls: yep, you guessed it, we saw 3 monkeys. The first one was a momma and her baby, who clung tightly to his/her mom’s belly as she picked through scraps that tourists were giving her. The other monkey was doing the same thing farther up the path. I guess these weren’t really “wild monkeys” but rather park-like monkeys. The ride back was tiring, and I found out that cyber café’s are sometimes open on Sundays, sometimes not. I did, however, get a chance to call home from a pay phone in my town. Pretty good weekend I’d say.
April 11, 2009
Tonight I went to the local Dar Tlib, which is a dorm for children from the surrounding areas that go to school in my town but live too far to realistically travel to and from home every day. There is a national system of these, and it is run pretty efficiently. The two local Peace Corps volunteers and a group of area volunteers were going to do a tooth brushing lesson, but a nationwide transportation strike put a hold on that. It has apparently been going on for a week now. My town was supposed to have a horse festival this Monday and Tuesday, but that has been pushed back a week. The Saturday market was also really affected. Not many people showed up to sell their goods, so it was pretty slim pickings for our weekly food. The prices have also gone way up, so we didn’t buy a lot of what was actually there. Pretty crazy. Anyway, back to my original story. All of the trainees, or teacher, and the two volunteers showed up for a possible talk by the Kaid, who’s a local official appointed by the King. He didn’t show up, so the director of the Dar Tlib provided entertainment for the night. The session started with a reading from the Quran, a religious chant from a group of three girls, and a song by 5 girls and one boy. Then we played a series of games. We started off with a version of musical chairs which was really fun. The director taught the group a song to sing. He would sing a verse, and everyone would repeat. He gave a broom to one person who would go around the room (the seats were all around the walls of the room) tapping people who would then have to get up and conga-line around the room. When the person with the broom dropped the broom, everyone would have to try to find a seat. The last person standing would have to then lead. It was a lot of fun. I’m guessing half of the 143 kids (ages 8 or 9 to 16) attended. The director then had our language teacher do an ice breaker song that we learned when we first came to Morocco. It was kind of a complicated thing, so it didn’t go over extremely well, but it served it’s purpose. The next game was my favorite. The director picked 4 people (including 2 trainees) to leave the room while he explained the rules to the rest. He had a whistle, which he put in the bottom of the back of his jacket. He would then bring one person in at a time and tell them to find the person with the whistle. He would stand with his back to a group of kids and tell the chosen person that someone in the room had a whistle. As he was talking, a child would blow the whistle dangling from his jacket. The acoustics of the room made it hard to tell where the noise was coming from. He would then point at someone across the room and say that they had the whistle. He’d then tell the chosen person to pat down the supposed perpetrator. It would happen 4 or 5 times before the chosen victim would figure it out. Lots of fun. The Americans then did a round of “Row Row Row Your Boat”. It was a mini-semi-disaster. It was too hard to teach the kids an English song, so we just did the round with our group of 8. The night ended with a group of boys leading a huge dance circle. The 5 boys had telunts, which are a round drum, kind of like a tambourine without the bells. Moroccans all have great rhythm. About half of the people got in a circle and started a slow dance around the room. Everyone else clapped. It was fun, but kind of tiring. The pace is really pretty slow, but the drumming is nice. Apparently this is the common dance at weddings all summer. The dancing starts around 8 and sometimes goes until 12. The men and women usually do it separately. This summer is going to be a lot of fun. Our teacher’s sister is getting married in May, and there’s an open invitation for all of us trainees. I can’t wait. A lot of volunteers go to a lot of weddings during the summers. I’m trying to suss out the appropriateness of some American dance moves so I can expose the locals to my horrible dancing.
April 12, 2009
So I guess this makes two pretty amazing weekends in a row. I went back out to the protected area near my town. This time I went with a pretty big group. Four Americans went out with 4 Moroccan guys (all under 20 years old). Our “guide” for this trip was a classmate of my host sister-in-law’s brother. He lives at the top of the protected area and his grandfather has a farm near the river at the base of the valley. The day was perfect for hiking, and I now realize why they call this country the cold land with the hot sun. It was pretty cool in the morning but once exposed to that sun for about 10 minutes I was pretty warm. I found out that I have been saying a pretty common phrase wrong the last 5 weeks. I’ve been saying “Mushi Mushkil“, which means “no problem”. The only problem with that is that I should be saying “Mashi Mushkil”. What I’ve been saying really is “cats (plural) problem”. Huge difference. Luckily a lot of people in my town kind of slur their speech a little, so everyone sounds like they are saying “cats problem”. Our guide took us down to his grandfather’s farm, which is near two really cool old 3 story buildings. We got to the river, where we learned we’d be crossing it 4 times to get to a point where we could head up the mountain to our new friend’s house for lunch. I was not prepared for fording the river. I was wearing my logger boots and long underwear, so I had to take off the boots and string them over my shoulder and hike up my pants and long johns past my knees. That apparently wasn’t far enough, cause my pants were soaked. I may have feet that look like long thin hobbit feet, but that’s as far as that comparison goes. I had to be helped across because I’m not used to walking on rocks without shoes. The hike up was pretty burly, and by the time I made it to the top, I was ready for tajine and some swunfu (rest). Our host gave us some mint tea with bread and fresh honey. I will probably only eat fresh honey from now on, no more stuff out of the bear shaped bottle. Our tajine was chalk full of olives and raisins, and therefore was very delicious. The 6 kilometer hike back to our town was very enjoyable, and I realized that berber people travel faster than anyone I’ve ever met. While talking to one of the local volunteers he confirmed that realization when he said that he calls it berber speed. I got a chance to talk to family tonight (thanks for answering Sarah, and sorry I missed you Adam), which always makes me very happy. I get a little motivational boost every time I talk to someone from home. That said, I’ll probably be calling some people this coming weekend (that means you mom and dad and Adam/Sarah).
April 16, 2009
The transportation strike is over. They came to an agreement last night, so it was a really pleasant sight to see all the grand taxis at our local taxi stand. That means the horse festival is on for this Sunday thru Tuesday. The town was pretty much out of chicken meat, which meant I had a couple small dinners, which suits my small stomach just fine. My teacher loves chicken, so he was pretty happy that we could have some for lunch. My training group gave our environmental educational lesson at the primary school and at the Dar Tlib. We had to change things around quickly several times. We found out we’d be presenting at the school on Monday, and presented on Tuesday. Our teacher was brilliant by coming up with a non-verbal skit to do before our lesson (two fellow trainees and I were seeds that turned into trees, two others planted and cared for us, and the last one cut us with an axe before being chased off by the caretakers). He also taught the kids a song about a little bird and a tree. We presented the lesson in front of a class of first year students (6 year olds), but they didn’t quite understand the skit, so the principal had them leave and brought in a class of 6th year students (11 and 12 year olds), who were much more responsive. We taught a lesson on how to plant little herb seeds in used yogurt, milk, and butter containers. They seemed to really enjoy the hands on demonstration (what kid doesn’t like to play in dirt, I know I STILL do). They also loved the song that our teacher taught them. After our presentation we worked on improving the lesson before giving it last night at the Dar Tlib. The second time around was great. We gave the lesson in front of a larger audience, so we brought up four volunteers to demonstrate the planting with the help of their peers in the audience. The association (community group) we worked with helped out a lot and played a quiz game with the kids after we finished our part. Today we got the feedback from the association and Dar Tlib people, which was very positive. I will be learning where I will be living and working the next two years tomorrow afternoon. I’m so excited and anxious to know.
Here are some things I’ve learned the last month and a half: I really can eat a lot of bread and drink tons of tea, two year olds are hilarious everywhere in the world, being able to laugh at yourself is key in life, sugar rice/pasta (a dish with rice or pasta, powdered sugar, and cinnamon, and sometimes raisins) sounds and looks awesome at first, but halfway through you realize eating it was a mistake, I really love hiking, not knowing the language everyone around you speaks is fine as long as you can utilize humor, and I can get by without a lot of “stuff”. Oh yeah, I still hate bananas, and monkeys are awesome, even though they tend to love the thing I hate most in life (refer back to the start of the sentence if I lost you on that one). Yeah, I can easily say I hate bananas more than anything else in life so far. Enough about that. This might be the last time I get to post before getting sworn in as a volunteer, so enjoy.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
I still hate bananas!
March 31, 2009
The title starts to tell the story. Those of you who know me well know that I absolutely HATE bananas. I was forced to eat a banana in first grade (thanks Mrs. Woodfill), and I’ve avoided them ever since. The smell nauseates me, so I’ve stayed away from them for about 19 years. That all changed last week when I was given an orange and a banana for my post dinner “snack”. I didn’t want to turn it down, which is silly because the Peace Corps people said that it won’t insult your host family to turn down food you don’t like, so I ate it. I can honestly say that I had no idea what they actually tasted like anymore. I can also say that I still don’t like ‘em. I surprisingly kept it down, smiled, and excused myself towards my room. I think that my worst nightmare would be to be forced to participate in a banana eating contest to save a loved one’s life. I would probably have to say my goodbyes to that loved one, because there’s no way I could stomach another damn banana. The next night was interesting, because I had to use my very limited language skills to try to convey that that one banana was the first one I had eaten in 19 years. I’m now 6 days banana free.
Anyway, enough about my psychosis regarding the devil fruit. Things have been going really well here in central Morocco. I’m still enjoying everything that I’m learning, and am finding that I can actually excel at learning a new language. That said, I’m probably going to plateau on my progress at some point in the next 3 or 4 months, but that’s to be expected I guess for Peace Corps volunteers. Peace Corps Morocco is trying out a new format for training, so we are the lucky group that gets to deal with the frustrations that come with being the first set of trainees. I am liking, however, the chance to give lots of feedback. Past training groups had every other week with a host family for the first 11 weeks of training. We are staying with host families for 8 weeks straight, which will give us a better opportunity to learn the language, and then we are sworn in as volunteers. We have 4 hours of language a day, a big delicious lunch, 2 coffee and tea breaks, and then 4 hours of technical and cultural lessons. There is a lot of technical stuff to go over, so at times it feels overwhelming, but I think we’ll benefit from it. After we’re sworn in we go to our assigned sites (home, if you will, for two years) for a couple months before meeting up at a central location for 2 weeks of technical training. This will allow us to integrate a little bit into our new communities and find out what sort of projects we can participate in. The 2 weeks of training after early integration should allow us to tailor our training to fit our needs and the needs of our new communities.
Ok, story time. This past weekend we weren’t allowed to go out of town, which meant more family time. It turned out to be a really cold and wet weekend. It snowed for about 24 hours straight, but nothing stuck. On Sunday I went to my language teacher’s house with another trainee and that trainee’s 20 year old host brother. The other guy and I taught the two Moroccans how to play cribbage, which delighted me, because they both like it, and we were able to practice counting in Tamazight. Another trainee came over and we watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development, which is still my favorite show. After that I was invited to a trainee’s house for tea and cake. My host family is next door neighbors to 2 other trainee’s host families, and they are really close friends. It was apparently the 17th birthday of the trainee’s host sister, so she made a zucchini bread cake with orange curd frosting. That was probably the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here. It was basically a big dance party. We watched Tamazight music videos while we drank tea and ate sweets. Eventually the girls all started dancing, and my host brother’s daughter Rabab, who is two years old, provided laughter for all. She is adorable, and watching her get excited about dancing is so funny. The 4 teenagers forced the three of us trainees to get up and dance. I will be the first to say that I can’t dance, but it’s easy to dance to Tam music. We even got the host mothers to dance. Watching my 60 year old host mother dance and correct all of our mistakes made my day.
Well, it’s probably going to be another 2 weeks before I can post again, but I’m sure I will have plenty more stories to share. I am going to try to post some more pictures. (http://picasaweb.google.com/CDReim/Week3And4?authkey=Gv1sRgCIypssD-w7b8NA#)
The title starts to tell the story. Those of you who know me well know that I absolutely HATE bananas. I was forced to eat a banana in first grade (thanks Mrs. Woodfill), and I’ve avoided them ever since. The smell nauseates me, so I’ve stayed away from them for about 19 years. That all changed last week when I was given an orange and a banana for my post dinner “snack”. I didn’t want to turn it down, which is silly because the Peace Corps people said that it won’t insult your host family to turn down food you don’t like, so I ate it. I can honestly say that I had no idea what they actually tasted like anymore. I can also say that I still don’t like ‘em. I surprisingly kept it down, smiled, and excused myself towards my room. I think that my worst nightmare would be to be forced to participate in a banana eating contest to save a loved one’s life. I would probably have to say my goodbyes to that loved one, because there’s no way I could stomach another damn banana. The next night was interesting, because I had to use my very limited language skills to try to convey that that one banana was the first one I had eaten in 19 years. I’m now 6 days banana free.
Anyway, enough about my psychosis regarding the devil fruit. Things have been going really well here in central Morocco. I’m still enjoying everything that I’m learning, and am finding that I can actually excel at learning a new language. That said, I’m probably going to plateau on my progress at some point in the next 3 or 4 months, but that’s to be expected I guess for Peace Corps volunteers. Peace Corps Morocco is trying out a new format for training, so we are the lucky group that gets to deal with the frustrations that come with being the first set of trainees. I am liking, however, the chance to give lots of feedback. Past training groups had every other week with a host family for the first 11 weeks of training. We are staying with host families for 8 weeks straight, which will give us a better opportunity to learn the language, and then we are sworn in as volunteers. We have 4 hours of language a day, a big delicious lunch, 2 coffee and tea breaks, and then 4 hours of technical and cultural lessons. There is a lot of technical stuff to go over, so at times it feels overwhelming, but I think we’ll benefit from it. After we’re sworn in we go to our assigned sites (home, if you will, for two years) for a couple months before meeting up at a central location for 2 weeks of technical training. This will allow us to integrate a little bit into our new communities and find out what sort of projects we can participate in. The 2 weeks of training after early integration should allow us to tailor our training to fit our needs and the needs of our new communities.
Ok, story time. This past weekend we weren’t allowed to go out of town, which meant more family time. It turned out to be a really cold and wet weekend. It snowed for about 24 hours straight, but nothing stuck. On Sunday I went to my language teacher’s house with another trainee and that trainee’s 20 year old host brother. The other guy and I taught the two Moroccans how to play cribbage, which delighted me, because they both like it, and we were able to practice counting in Tamazight. Another trainee came over and we watched a couple episodes of Arrested Development, which is still my favorite show. After that I was invited to a trainee’s house for tea and cake. My host family is next door neighbors to 2 other trainee’s host families, and they are really close friends. It was apparently the 17th birthday of the trainee’s host sister, so she made a zucchini bread cake with orange curd frosting. That was probably the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here. It was basically a big dance party. We watched Tamazight music videos while we drank tea and ate sweets. Eventually the girls all started dancing, and my host brother’s daughter Rabab, who is two years old, provided laughter for all. She is adorable, and watching her get excited about dancing is so funny. The 4 teenagers forced the three of us trainees to get up and dance. I will be the first to say that I can’t dance, but it’s easy to dance to Tam music. We even got the host mothers to dance. Watching my 60 year old host mother dance and correct all of our mistakes made my day.
Well, it’s probably going to be another 2 weeks before I can post again, but I’m sure I will have plenty more stories to share. I am going to try to post some more pictures. (http://picasaweb.google.com/CDReim/Week3And4?authkey=Gv1sRgCIypssD-w7b8NA#)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
I have half my Sh*& back, hurray!
March 20, 2009,
I have great news, Peace Corps tracked down my bag!!! It made it out of the hotel in Beni Mellal, but not on the van to my central HUB site, but rather to the second van to the two health HUB sites. I should be able to pick it up next week when I go back to my HUB site. Only 5 more days of wearing the same three shirts.
I have never eaten so much bread in my life. My day starts with 3-4 cups of green tea (which I never drank back in the states), 3 kinds of olives, a ton of fresh baked bread, and a bowl of orange marmalade and a bowl of olive oil (which tastes like olives). I then go to my LCF Haddou’s house for language and culture lessons. Around 10:30 we have coffee (which I had never had before coming here; I know, weird that a 25 year old has never had a cup of coffee in his life), which I like quite a bit, and cookies. At 12:30 we have lunch, which is usually a tagine (lots of vegetables, since we have two vegetarians in the group, chicken or sheep, and lots of fresh bread. One of my language group member’s host mother is the cook for our class. On Fridays we have couscous in a giant bowl topped with vegetables and chicken, and no bread. But on a normal day the bread is there. At 3:30 or 4 we have tea or coffee and more cookies. When I get home around 6:30 or 7, I have 3 or 4 more cups of tea and about another loaf of bread. Every time I lean back to catch my breath from shoveling bread in my mouth, I get told to tsh tsh tsh, which means eat, eat, eat. Between 8:30 and 9:30 we have dinner, which includes, you guessed it, more bread. This time we have no tea, but there is also usually no water. The family drinks out of a communal cup, and we were told by peace corps staff that it was alright to use our own water bottle to avoid catching any colds being passed around, and to ensure that we’re getting treated water. I have been reluctant to bring a bottle in, because I don’t want to seem rude, but again I’ve never been offered water. Anyways, after I eat and am told to keep tsh tsh tsh-ing, I stuff a little more down and then say safi safi (enough, enough), and shbet, shbet (I’m full, I’m full). I think they laugh at me for not eating a lot and saying safi safi, shbet shbet all the time. Actually I know they laugh at me, because the 2 year old girl Rebab will mock me to my face and start laughing. She’s lucky she’s so darn cute, or I’d have hurt feelings. I can’t wait to be able to form complete, semi-complex statements so I can explain that my tiny stomach has not stretched out to meet the demands of the average Moroccan family.
March 22, 2009
I got my bag yesterday!!! Now my host family thinks I’m rich because they think I had it sent from the US. Gonna have to figure out a way to let them know that I originally brought the bag with me, but that it was misplaced. I came into the big HUB town today with a guy from my group, and we met up with about 15 different trainees from other sites. It was a pretty fun day, with lots of practice bargaining and getting by without using a notes. I bought a pair of bright yellow half-sandals that are apparently traditional in the Fes region. 60 dirhams isn’t too bad (think 8-8.5 dirhams/US dollar). I’m pretty pumped about that purchase. I’m going to hold off on buying a Jalaba (what Obi-wan Kenobi wore in Star Wars, for real), until later this summer. My friend bought one at souk yesterday for 250 dirhams, and apparently his host family thinks he got ripped off. I’m going to have one tailor made for 300 in a month or two. My friend gets lots of looks around our town, because apparently older men wear them, so to see a young white guy wearing one is a funny sight. I’ve told him to maybe not wear a jacket over it AND his Indiana Jones hat. He should pick one or the other, but both is just way too much. My host mother had fun teasing him this morning over tea. Well, that’s all from me for now. Oh yeah, how ‘bout them Boilers, making it to the Sweet 16? One of the other trainees is a huge UCONN fan, so I’m gonna have to talk some smack with him later this week.
I have great news, Peace Corps tracked down my bag!!! It made it out of the hotel in Beni Mellal, but not on the van to my central HUB site, but rather to the second van to the two health HUB sites. I should be able to pick it up next week when I go back to my HUB site. Only 5 more days of wearing the same three shirts.
I have never eaten so much bread in my life. My day starts with 3-4 cups of green tea (which I never drank back in the states), 3 kinds of olives, a ton of fresh baked bread, and a bowl of orange marmalade and a bowl of olive oil (which tastes like olives). I then go to my LCF Haddou’s house for language and culture lessons. Around 10:30 we have coffee (which I had never had before coming here; I know, weird that a 25 year old has never had a cup of coffee in his life), which I like quite a bit, and cookies. At 12:30 we have lunch, which is usually a tagine (lots of vegetables, since we have two vegetarians in the group, chicken or sheep, and lots of fresh bread. One of my language group member’s host mother is the cook for our class. On Fridays we have couscous in a giant bowl topped with vegetables and chicken, and no bread. But on a normal day the bread is there. At 3:30 or 4 we have tea or coffee and more cookies. When I get home around 6:30 or 7, I have 3 or 4 more cups of tea and about another loaf of bread. Every time I lean back to catch my breath from shoveling bread in my mouth, I get told to tsh tsh tsh, which means eat, eat, eat. Between 8:30 and 9:30 we have dinner, which includes, you guessed it, more bread. This time we have no tea, but there is also usually no water. The family drinks out of a communal cup, and we were told by peace corps staff that it was alright to use our own water bottle to avoid catching any colds being passed around, and to ensure that we’re getting treated water. I have been reluctant to bring a bottle in, because I don’t want to seem rude, but again I’ve never been offered water. Anyways, after I eat and am told to keep tsh tsh tsh-ing, I stuff a little more down and then say safi safi (enough, enough), and shbet, shbet (I’m full, I’m full). I think they laugh at me for not eating a lot and saying safi safi, shbet shbet all the time. Actually I know they laugh at me, because the 2 year old girl Rebab will mock me to my face and start laughing. She’s lucky she’s so darn cute, or I’d have hurt feelings. I can’t wait to be able to form complete, semi-complex statements so I can explain that my tiny stomach has not stretched out to meet the demands of the average Moroccan family.
March 22, 2009
I got my bag yesterday!!! Now my host family thinks I’m rich because they think I had it sent from the US. Gonna have to figure out a way to let them know that I originally brought the bag with me, but that it was misplaced. I came into the big HUB town today with a guy from my group, and we met up with about 15 different trainees from other sites. It was a pretty fun day, with lots of practice bargaining and getting by without using a notes. I bought a pair of bright yellow half-sandals that are apparently traditional in the Fes region. 60 dirhams isn’t too bad (think 8-8.5 dirhams/US dollar). I’m pretty pumped about that purchase. I’m going to hold off on buying a Jalaba (what Obi-wan Kenobi wore in Star Wars, for real), until later this summer. My friend bought one at souk yesterday for 250 dirhams, and apparently his host family thinks he got ripped off. I’m going to have one tailor made for 300 in a month or two. My friend gets lots of looks around our town, because apparently older men wear them, so to see a young white guy wearing one is a funny sight. I’ve told him to maybe not wear a jacket over it AND his Indiana Jones hat. He should pick one or the other, but both is just way too much. My host mother had fun teasing him this morning over tea. Well, that’s all from me for now. Oh yeah, how ‘bout them Boilers, making it to the Sweet 16? One of the other trainees is a huge UCONN fan, so I’m gonna have to talk some smack with him later this week.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Finally, a blog post from Morocco
March, 17th, 2009
Well, I’ve finally gotten around to writing for this blog. What a crazy couple weeks it’s been. First, I missed staging in Philadelphia due to a bad snow storm in the northeast. I had to fly to NY La Guardia first, then caught a bus to JFK, making it with about 3 hours to spare. The flight was good, Richard Gier (don’t care how he spells it really) put me to sleep with a boring movie, and Nicolas Cage entertained me with how bad he acted in Bangkok Dangerous. The airport in Casablanca was interesting. I realized I was in a different country when I could smell the smoke in the building. The bus ride was probably the highlight of the day, because everything was so new.
I will sort of gloss over details of the first week. I don’t think anyone really wants to hear about the “welcome to Morocco” training process. The highlight of the week’s talks was probably the one hour talk about diarrhea. The hotel we stayed at in Beni Mellal, a town of about 200,000, was nice. We had the pleasure of having the police watch out for us every afternoon when we went out to walk around. There are 61 of us so far, raging in age from 23 to early 80’s. There’s one guy who’s on his third peace corps assignment. The end of the week was pretty exciting. We received our language group assignments on Saturday, and met our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator Haddou. Our group is 3 girls, 3 guys, and I couldn’t be happier with how the group turned out. We are all pretty even-keeled, and we get along great. This is me at 8 days with the same 5 people, hopefully it stays this way. We are learning Tamazight, which is a berber dialect. It is an old language, dating back some 3200 years or so (don’t quote me on this, I’m pretty tired right now).
The start of my community based training did not go how I thought it would. First off, we had to rearrange our luggage (2 bags at first). They told us to put what we’d need at our host family’s house in one bag, and put less required items in the other bag, to be put in storage at a central hub site that we’d have access to once a week. Each group would be going to a different site, and their would be 5 different HUB sites, where the groups would meet for lectures and technical training. Ok, that wasn’t very hard. To get to our individual communities, we’d be taking local transportation, which in this case were grand taxis. The grand taxi is a wonderful thing. They are old Mercedes Benz sedans, which have seats for 5 people, including the driver. The thing is, you pay for each seat, and the taxi does not leave until 5 seats are paid for, not including the driver’s seat. You may be saying, well, that means that the taxi would have to hold 6 people. You would be right to say that. A normal grand taxi ride is a cramped affair. Well, we had to also fit 6 bags into the taxi. That’s where my day started to turn south. They fit 5 bags in the trunk and on the roof rack, but didn’t have space for a sixth. Since I was wearing an undershirt, shirt, fleece, sweatshirt, and jacket as well as underwear, long underwear, and jeans, I figured I could give up my bag, since I was reassured it would make it to my hub and I’d have it in two days. The 2 hour taxi ride was definitely a bonding experience.
When we made it to our community (which I can’t say the name of for security reasons), we headed to our LCF’s (that guy Haddou I mentioned earlier) house. He taught us some phrases of Tam to use during our first lunch, which was going to be with our host families. We waited until a member of each family showed up, then split off for lunch. Well, my host family did not send a member, so Haddou walked with me to their house, which was about 15 minutes out of town. The place was inside an old French fort, which they had turned into a sort of barn for goats and sheep. Apparently when setting up the host family, the Homestay coordinator got an ok from the mother and sister, but not the father. The father was not happy about possibly taking in someone for 2 months. The reason for this was because the family was staying there for free (squatting, if you will), and he did not want the local authorities to come around asking about why they were getting paid by the peace corps to host someone at a house they did not own. That was strike two for the day. I had a quick bite to eat with Haddou as the others had lunch. When they came back Haddou took me to meet my new host family. I met the host mother, who was very nice, and I put down my computer bag, sleeping bag, and jacket, and then headed back to “class”.
The first night with my host family was AWKWARD. I knew how to say hello (which is a long greeting that is used pretty much every time you see someone in a small town) and “what is this?” My host father sat with me while I had tea and bread and answered all my “what is this?” questions about everything I could see around me. Later that evening the family invited me into their second sitting room, which is where they watch tv and sometimes sleep. The father pointed at the mattress he was sitting near and gestured for me to sit down. He then pointed further down the mattress towards a blanket, and I assumed he meant to sit down, but on the blanket. This turned out to be my biggest, grandest, faux pas. Underneath the blanket was the father’s son’s one month old baby!! No one told me that they had grandchildren running around, or even laying around hidden under blankets. I guess that was the third strike for the day. I’m glad I’ve gotten the most embarrassing moment (I hope) out of the way quickly. Things have gotten better since that moment.
My only complaint so far during these first 2 weeks is that I have been missing one of my bags. It was not at my hub site hotel two days after giving it up. This is a real lesson in getting by with what you have. I’m glad I put some excess clothes in my second bag, so I have a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis, and a pair of carhart pants, and some extra underwear and socks. We’ll see how it goes the next week or so I guess. I think I can get by without the things in that bag, but I have a lot of clothes in there, plus a really expensive dental appliance that I would like to at least have around to remind me of how expensive it is. Oh well, mashi mushkil, as the berber’s say (it’s no problem). I’ll live.
Well, I think I will sum up the rest of the time by saying that it is definitely a wonderful experience. I’ve witnessed two souks, or weekly markets, in two different towns, a fight between a drugged out woman and another homeless man, experienced the frustrations and rewards of living in a household that speaks almost no English (the 36 year old son speaks pretty good English, but he’s not around because he runs the local game room, which gets a lot of business), am slowly mastering the Turkish toilet, bucket bathing, and eating copious amounts of freshly baked bread with 3 to 4 cups of sugary tea, and am soaking up as much language as I can. I am also getting quite good at playing with a hacky sack. The rest of these first two months is gonna be quite the trip. I can’t wait to get better at speaking Tamazight. Well, hopefully I will have this posted by the end of the week, when I get access to an internet café. Hopefully I can have some pictures uploaded as well. Until next time I guess.
Side note, it's currently March 19th, and I'm in a cyber cafe with 3 other trainees with laptops. We are all frantically typing away during a break in our training. The wireless doesn't work, but the guy was nice enough to let us commandeer 4 cables from computers in the cafe. Still no word on my bags, but I'm gonna talk to someone about it later today. Hope everyone is doing well. Until next time.
Well, I’ve finally gotten around to writing for this blog. What a crazy couple weeks it’s been. First, I missed staging in Philadelphia due to a bad snow storm in the northeast. I had to fly to NY La Guardia first, then caught a bus to JFK, making it with about 3 hours to spare. The flight was good, Richard Gier (don’t care how he spells it really) put me to sleep with a boring movie, and Nicolas Cage entertained me with how bad he acted in Bangkok Dangerous. The airport in Casablanca was interesting. I realized I was in a different country when I could smell the smoke in the building. The bus ride was probably the highlight of the day, because everything was so new.
I will sort of gloss over details of the first week. I don’t think anyone really wants to hear about the “welcome to Morocco” training process. The highlight of the week’s talks was probably the one hour talk about diarrhea. The hotel we stayed at in Beni Mellal, a town of about 200,000, was nice. We had the pleasure of having the police watch out for us every afternoon when we went out to walk around. There are 61 of us so far, raging in age from 23 to early 80’s. There’s one guy who’s on his third peace corps assignment. The end of the week was pretty exciting. We received our language group assignments on Saturday, and met our Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator Haddou. Our group is 3 girls, 3 guys, and I couldn’t be happier with how the group turned out. We are all pretty even-keeled, and we get along great. This is me at 8 days with the same 5 people, hopefully it stays this way. We are learning Tamazight, which is a berber dialect. It is an old language, dating back some 3200 years or so (don’t quote me on this, I’m pretty tired right now).
The start of my community based training did not go how I thought it would. First off, we had to rearrange our luggage (2 bags at first). They told us to put what we’d need at our host family’s house in one bag, and put less required items in the other bag, to be put in storage at a central hub site that we’d have access to once a week. Each group would be going to a different site, and their would be 5 different HUB sites, where the groups would meet for lectures and technical training. Ok, that wasn’t very hard. To get to our individual communities, we’d be taking local transportation, which in this case were grand taxis. The grand taxi is a wonderful thing. They are old Mercedes Benz sedans, which have seats for 5 people, including the driver. The thing is, you pay for each seat, and the taxi does not leave until 5 seats are paid for, not including the driver’s seat. You may be saying, well, that means that the taxi would have to hold 6 people. You would be right to say that. A normal grand taxi ride is a cramped affair. Well, we had to also fit 6 bags into the taxi. That’s where my day started to turn south. They fit 5 bags in the trunk and on the roof rack, but didn’t have space for a sixth. Since I was wearing an undershirt, shirt, fleece, sweatshirt, and jacket as well as underwear, long underwear, and jeans, I figured I could give up my bag, since I was reassured it would make it to my hub and I’d have it in two days. The 2 hour taxi ride was definitely a bonding experience.
When we made it to our community (which I can’t say the name of for security reasons), we headed to our LCF’s (that guy Haddou I mentioned earlier) house. He taught us some phrases of Tam to use during our first lunch, which was going to be with our host families. We waited until a member of each family showed up, then split off for lunch. Well, my host family did not send a member, so Haddou walked with me to their house, which was about 15 minutes out of town. The place was inside an old French fort, which they had turned into a sort of barn for goats and sheep. Apparently when setting up the host family, the Homestay coordinator got an ok from the mother and sister, but not the father. The father was not happy about possibly taking in someone for 2 months. The reason for this was because the family was staying there for free (squatting, if you will), and he did not want the local authorities to come around asking about why they were getting paid by the peace corps to host someone at a house they did not own. That was strike two for the day. I had a quick bite to eat with Haddou as the others had lunch. When they came back Haddou took me to meet my new host family. I met the host mother, who was very nice, and I put down my computer bag, sleeping bag, and jacket, and then headed back to “class”.
The first night with my host family was AWKWARD. I knew how to say hello (which is a long greeting that is used pretty much every time you see someone in a small town) and “what is this?” My host father sat with me while I had tea and bread and answered all my “what is this?” questions about everything I could see around me. Later that evening the family invited me into their second sitting room, which is where they watch tv and sometimes sleep. The father pointed at the mattress he was sitting near and gestured for me to sit down. He then pointed further down the mattress towards a blanket, and I assumed he meant to sit down, but on the blanket. This turned out to be my biggest, grandest, faux pas. Underneath the blanket was the father’s son’s one month old baby!! No one told me that they had grandchildren running around, or even laying around hidden under blankets. I guess that was the third strike for the day. I’m glad I’ve gotten the most embarrassing moment (I hope) out of the way quickly. Things have gotten better since that moment.
My only complaint so far during these first 2 weeks is that I have been missing one of my bags. It was not at my hub site hotel two days after giving it up. This is a real lesson in getting by with what you have. I’m glad I put some excess clothes in my second bag, so I have a pair of jeans, a pair of khakis, and a pair of carhart pants, and some extra underwear and socks. We’ll see how it goes the next week or so I guess. I think I can get by without the things in that bag, but I have a lot of clothes in there, plus a really expensive dental appliance that I would like to at least have around to remind me of how expensive it is. Oh well, mashi mushkil, as the berber’s say (it’s no problem). I’ll live.
Well, I think I will sum up the rest of the time by saying that it is definitely a wonderful experience. I’ve witnessed two souks, or weekly markets, in two different towns, a fight between a drugged out woman and another homeless man, experienced the frustrations and rewards of living in a household that speaks almost no English (the 36 year old son speaks pretty good English, but he’s not around because he runs the local game room, which gets a lot of business), am slowly mastering the Turkish toilet, bucket bathing, and eating copious amounts of freshly baked bread with 3 to 4 cups of sugary tea, and am soaking up as much language as I can. I am also getting quite good at playing with a hacky sack. The rest of these first two months is gonna be quite the trip. I can’t wait to get better at speaking Tamazight. Well, hopefully I will have this posted by the end of the week, when I get access to an internet café. Hopefully I can have some pictures uploaded as well. Until next time I guess.
Side note, it's currently March 19th, and I'm in a cyber cafe with 3 other trainees with laptops. We are all frantically typing away during a break in our training. The wireless doesn't work, but the guy was nice enough to let us commandeer 4 cables from computers in the cafe. Still no word on my bags, but I'm gonna talk to someone about it later today. Hope everyone is doing well. Until next time.
Monday, March 2, 2009
About to Leave
Well, I've finally started the blog I've talked about starting for months. It's almost 3 in the morning, and my flight from Portland to Philadelphia leaves at 9:10. All I can say is that I'm pretty stressed out about leaving, although I couldn't be more happy and excited about the next 27 months. I'll miss everyone here in the states, and I'll think of you all often, but I'm looking forward to meeting 60 fellow volunteers today. Well, I should probably try to get an hour or two of sleep now. I'll fiddle around with this blog later, snazz it up and whatnot.
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